Somewhat mixed emotions about the latest community event.
On one hand, it feels like the organisers listened to some of the feedback
from previous events that were very underwhelming. For example, they avoided
the miserable failing of the Valentine's Day event by actually hosting the
event in a well themed venue that very much had a Halloween feel to it.
Similarly, they made sure that there were plenty of photo opportunities for
guests to pose and make some memories for themselves to keep.
On the other hand, the layout of the venue made it almost impossible to find
anyone, even if you knew they were in attendance. By going for a long but
narrow layout, it really congested everyone into a very tight space. The cynic
in me says that was a deliberate ploy to make the crowd as dense as possible
in an attempt to make it look as impressive as possible. All it ended up doing
was, like I already mentioned, make it super hard to find anyone in the crowd
and, when you did eventually spot them from across the room, make it an
absolute pain in the butt to actually make your way across to rendezvous with
them.
Possibly that comes some way towards explaining why I found the first hour and
a half that I was at the event to be a pretty miserable time. Because it
literally took that long for a single person to even acknowledge my presence
there. Not until Jess finally turned up, did I get so much as a greeting!
Despite deliberately choosing to sit away from the dancefloor in a slightly
more visible location.
Or maybe people saw me there but none of them had any interest in talking to
me. I mean, who am I kidding? Feeling sorry for myself for being all on my
lonesome in a room with over 400 people in, is so totally typical of me. In
which case, I'm just unfairly projected my own frustrations on to the event.
And things did pick up for me as a few of my favourite girls started to
trickle in as the crowd grew to over 500 peeps. But, if we are being brutally
truthful, that probably speaks volumes about the current state of the
community more than anything.
With all of that being said, let me refocus back to the organisation of the
event and there is definitely one area in which previous feedback was
completely ignored. And that meant they wildly missed the mark, not for the
first time. And that's the music. Once again, we got random, generic dance
music for a themed event where it should have been a no-brainer to select
spooky and sinister tunes. Based on my conversation with other people, I know
that I'm far from alone in thinking that too. It really shouldn't be difficult
to get something as fundamental to a party as the music right but they
consistently seem to prioritise the names of the selected DJs over what they
will actually contribute to the event in terms of settings the atmosphere.
The next event has already been announced for in a month's time and will be
the annual anniversary event. No themed music required for that one so I guess
I'll be able to skip repeating myself for that one but the Christmas Party
will be up after that, and if they cannot get the music right for that one,
there is literally no hope that they ever will...
Anyway, thinking beyond my own personal experience, which started out pretty
negatively but then improved to being a decent night out, the general response
from the community seems to have been pretty positive. Like I said at the out
said, the organisers certainly addressed some of the past complaints and I
think a lot of the guests recognised and were grateful for that.
I should probably also touch on the main thing that everyone surely associates
most closely with Halloween and that's the dressing up. Now, I think I'm a bit
old-fashioned in that I feel like Halloween costumes should ideally reflect
the spooky them of the day. Monsters, creatures of the night, supernatural
beings and any other sort of scary characters are what I instinctively think
of. I seem to increasingly be an outlier in that regard though as, these days,
it is becoming ever more about just simply dressing up as someone or
something.
It would be foolish of me to grumble about that as it obviously massively
opens up the various options to pick from. Especially if, like me, you're not
great at creating your own costumes so need as many options to pick from as
possible. To my credit, I actually managed to come up with 4 or 5 costumes to
pick from.
Of course, I left the final choice to the last minute. Mostly because I was a
little torn. One of my outfits was, in my humble opinion, absolutely spot on
and a great reproduction of the original. However, it was a little too niche
and I didn't want to force people to keep asking me who it was. So I went for
probably my most basic but also recognisable option. And, funnily enough, it
kind of ticked the box for being scary themed because it was my favourite
zombie-killing badass babe; the wonderful Ms Jill Valentine from Resident
Evil.
But you probably already figured that out from the pics above, right?
Right....?!
For the record, the other choices I produced were Yumeko Jabami from the anime
Kakegurui (which was the one I was actually quite proud of), 2B from the video
game Nier: Automata, Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop and, finally, Kim
Possible, which was the first idea I had and one that I was quite keen on but
the outfit really didn't turn out to be up to the standard that I had hoped
for. I did spot one other person that did go as 2B and her effort was almost
identical to the one that I prepared, so I'm glad I didn't pick that one.
Perhaps next year though...
And, contrary to my prediction at the Juice Halloween Party, this year didn't
become the year that everyone goes as Wednesday Adams. Perrie reprised her
role as Wednesday from Juice, albeit in a slightly different version of her
costume, and they only other one that I actually remember spotting was Emmy.
Then comically, we all ended hanging out in a little group together.
To be fair, there probably other Wednesday's there. In fact, I would wager
there were. They were simply lost in the crowd that was crammed into a space
that was much too small for that many people. Along with all the other great
costumes that I undoubtedly didn't get to see. Actually, as I write this, I
remember seeing another pair of Wednesday there. Strange how they seemed to
keep coming in twos!
But do you know who wasn't dressed up at all? Mr Party Animal himself, Gizmo.
Or maybe, in his eyes, not wearing his customary beanie hat is considered
dressing up by him. I mean, Lisa's cow outfit (at least I hope that's what it
was) wasn't the biggest effort that I've ever seen, there was some token
effort there. But zilch, nadda, none...from good old Giz. Disappointing...
Someone please get him an outfit for next year!
